Words that belong nowhere V

The fourteenth entry is porventura, and English once owned it letter for letter. Break it open and both halves are still visible: por, the preposition, and ventura, from the Latin ventura, the things about to come, a form built on venire, to come. The word therefore says by what is on its way, which is as good an account of chance as any language has managed. English took the same compound from Old French, wrote it « peradventure », used it for centuries to mean perhaps, and then let it go. It survives in one corner only, the lawyers’ « beyond peradventure », where the noun has hardened into the doubt itself. The same Latin word gave « adventure », what comes at somebody, and the clipped « venture », where what is coming has turned into risk. Portuguese simply kept the adverb at work, and it appears wherever a sentence is being careful: se porventura chover, terá porventura pensado nisso. What one language retired to a courtroom, the other still says on a Tuesday.